iPhone vs Leica

One afternoon in San Francisco I wandered out to Pier 39 to snap a few photos of the bay and Golden Gate Bridge. Sadly the fog rolled in as I made my way toward the pier, not exactly the photo ops I had hoped for… I fired off a couple of shots and made my way back to the trolley.

While I waited I reviewed the pics on my iPhone and processed a few via the instagr.am app (toaster) for posting. You know me, live updates from where ever I am in the world. To my surprise I processed one of those foggy shots and got the most amazing, soft, dreamy shot (on the left). I actually had someone tell me they would pay for a photo like this.

Part of what I love about iphoneography is the unknown… you have very little control, almost no zoom and then add app processing to the mix, you never know what you will get! Well, the one downside to an app like instagr.am is the LOW resolution output. It’s really meant to be a “social” sharing site and thus, high resolution images would not be necessary. But every now and then it would be nice to make a print! At 600px and 72dpi, I will be lucky to get a 4×4 out of this baby.

Luckily I had taken almost the same photo with my Leica D-Lux 5 and with a little Photoshop processing am able to get pretty close to the iPhone version – at a much better resolution! I really wish I knew the actions they use in the instagr.am app so that I would have a better chance at hitting the vignette and coloring. Might need to add a little blur too … Anyhoo… I’m pretty happy with both, will print both and see what comes of it.